The appointment stunned some AIDS researchers and activists, who said Thacker has a shaky grasp of science and outdated views on the issue despite being HIV-positive.

They noted that Thacker had argued that religious faith could cure homosexuals, that condoms do not stop the spread of HIV and that people choose to be gay.

"When you appoint someone with this social view, it is dangerous," said James Loyce, deputy director of health for AIDS programs with the San Francisco Health Department. "It sends the wrong message to the gay community and the wrong message to the broader community."

An unnamed Bush administration official told the Washington Post that Thacker would be just one of 35 members on the panel.

OTHER APPOINTEES

The official also noted other members who would be sworn in next week alongside Thacker included a member of the board of Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian advocacy group; an adviser on AIDS to the World Bank; and a state public health officer.

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Thacker, this official said, "has a very powerful and tragic personal story and an ability to reach out to an audience we couldn't reach in the process."

Others have noted that Thacker, who says he contracted HIV after his wife was infected through a blood transfusion, has campaigned tirelessly to urge churches to treat those with HIV and AIDS with more compassion.

Thacker's assistant said Wednesday he would not speak to reporters until after being sworn in next week. Health and Human Services Department spokesman Bill Pierce and Patricia Ware, executive director of the commission, declined to comment.

CRITICAL OF RESPONSE

It is the latest incarnation of a body created during the Reagan administration. Previous commissions have been highly critical of the nation's response to the AIDS epidemic and helped nudge the government and the pharmaceutical industry toward greater action.

While some have questioned the efficacy of the panel, many agreed that Thacker's appointment would harm its credibility and that the resulting controversy could overshadow its work.

"This individual is an extremist ideologue who persecutes and demeans an entire class of people impacted by this disease," said David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. "That type of person has no business advising the president of the United States on how the government should address the epidemic."

In speeches and writings posted on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and said "Christ can rescue the homosexual."

As word of his appointment spread through the gay community in recent days, some of the material disappeared from the Web site or was edited.

'BANKRUPT POLICY'

"Abstinence is a notoriously bankrupt policy," said Michael Lauro of Survive AIDS, a volunteer advocacy group. "No developed country takes it seriously. It politicizes what should be a public health issue."

Others argued that urging abstinence until marriage does nothing to help gays and lesbians, who cannot legally marry.

"There's very good science supporting programs like education and condom use, and to have someone on the commission making statements based on morality and not on science is disturbing," said Tom Coates, director of the UC-San Francisco AIDS Research Institute. "It continues the Bush administration's trend toward morality-based rather than evidence-based public health and HIV prevention."

Coates and others denounced the White House's claim that Thacker's views would be among many weighed by the commission.

"Would you have a member of the Flat Earth Society advising the president on space policy?" Coates asked. "Why would you have people advising the president about approaches to public health who don't read the science?"

According to Thacker's biography on the Web site of the Scepter Institute, a nonprofit that sells religious-based AIDS material, Thacker is a graduate of Bob Jones University and was a "member of the university faculty for seven years."

Bush caused a stir in the last campaign when he spoke at the South Carolina university, which until recently banned interracial dating and has been accused of anti-Catholic attitudes.

Thacker returned to Bob Jones University in September 2001 to give two speeches. The speeches, summarized on the university Web site, addressed the "sin of homosexuality" and the Thacker family's struggle with AIDS.

"When he and his wife discovered in 1986 that they had contracted HIV, the most horrible thought was that it was a disease connected with the sin of homosexuality," the summary reads. "They didn't want anyone to think they were homosexual because they knew what the Bible said about homosexuality."

The summary of his speeches also notes that "Homosexuality is not inborn biologically, just as incest and bestiality are not inborn. Studies have shown that thousands of homosexuals have been set free from this sin."

'REPARATIVE THERAPY'

Thacker's beliefs are known as "reparative therapy," which deems homosexuality aberrant behavior that can be modified through religious faith.

Thacker's promotional materials stress the need for compassion toward all AIDS patients, urging churches to think "Christianly" about people with AIDS and to hate the sin, but love the sinner.

"Be compassionate to those caught up in this sinful deathstyle," the Bob Jones summary stated. "Only when homosexuals know it is a sin can they repent."

Commission co-Chairman Tom Coburn said he knew little about Thacker except that he is HIV-positive. He said Thacker's views on homosexuality were irrelevant to the commission's efforts to stop the epidemic.